Straw Hat - Arts

Arts

Artwork produced during the Middle Ages shows, among the more fashionably dressed, possibly the most spectacular straw hats ever seen on men in the West, notably those worn in the Arnolfini Portrait of 1434 by Jan van Eyck (tall, stained black) and by Saint George in a painting by Pisanello of around the same date (left). In the middle of the 18th century it was fashionable for rich ladies to dress as country girls with a low crowned,wide brimmed straw hat to complete the look.